


Pandemonium Spared

by PanickedFox



Category: Dungeon Fighter Online (Video Game), Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, And it gets worse from there, Crossover, Dungeon Fighter Online Spoilers, Gen, LOTS OF SPOILERS, Mass Effect Spoilers, So many spoilers in the first chapter, Spoilers, alternate version of events
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2018-12-25 04:47:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12028428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanickedFox/pseuds/PanickedFox
Summary: When a mysterious force affects a mystic ritual, a team of adventurers find themselves on a different world... though not the one they were hoping to find. They soon discover that while this dimension is unplagued by the Dark Apostles, they have their own powerful giants to deal with that are just as dangerous. Lotus, Delezie, Bakal, Anton. The Apostles have proven no match for the adventurers thus far, but now they must stand with new allies against the threat of the Reapers.





	1. Diversions

**Author's Note:**

> So... fair warning, this is going to be a heavily altered set of events in the ME3 timeline. Specifically because there are going to be altering factors in things throughout. Anyway, if anyone's curious and doesn't want to wait for confirmation, we're picking up right after Jack and the school on ME3 and as the party is headed to Pandemonium to unlock Apostle Luke's field on the DFO front. Enjoy!

“The signal originated somewhere north of this position.” EDI had assured them more than once that this was not, in fact, a wild goose chase. The signal was similar to a Reaper’s signature, but had lasted only a brief moment. 3.12 seconds, according to the scanners. Liara had suggested that it may have been an echo, or some other kind of anomaly that would neatly explain how a Reaper had appeared and then utterly vanished again from the surface of an abandoned mining facility on a world that should have been outside of their current reach. EDI had won out, however, with the assertion that if it wasn’t a Reaper, it might be another Cerberus operation. And so, Shepard had decided that this was a thing they were doing.

“So in the camp, then. We should keep off the coms for now. If it’s a Cerberus op, they might be looking for transmissions, and given that the Reapers don't seem too interested in most abandoned human buildings, it's looking much more likely.” Shepard scanned the barren field below her. For a mining colony, this was a great planet, if a little dreary. No water and too harsh winters made this planet uninhabitable in the long term, but the air was breathable and the minerals just below the surface were valuable and plenty. Unfortunately, the bidding wars on the mining rights had relegated any productive use of them only doable by small, legally questionable teams. As such, this larger facility went mostly unused, and the cold snaps had taken their toll on the structures.

“You see what I see?” Garrus had trained his scope on one of the outer buildings, or, more accurately, the ground outside of one of them. There was a rather large black circle amid the grey dust and dirt, but more interesting were the footprints leading away from it. They weren't far, just a little further than the bottom of the ridge they stood on. "Four people. They look human, could be asari. One of them is... really small. If this is a Cerberus site, I think they may have a kid with them. Possible hostages."

"Maybe a Volus?" Shepard didn't like the idea of someone being trapped in there. Especially a kid. Garrus shook his head.

"Stride's too long. If they are hostages, I don't think they know it. Whoever it is looks like they skipped in there."

"Well, it looks like we're going to have to go in after them. If all goes well, maybe it's just some people that got left by their dropship. And sent out a Reaper signal. At an abandoned facility. During a race for survival against giant killer machines."

EDI piped up again, finally, "It is unlikely."

"Thanks."

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On another world, and a few hours earlier, four adventurers readied to go through a portal. Zikori checked her guns one last time, ensured her ammo manufacturer was in place and functional, checked her grenades and their microfactory, her propulsion belt, her eye mounted scanner, her-

"You've been at your checks for almost an hour." The Empyrean huffed to herself as she was interrupted by her Dark Elf companion. Jikar didn't appreciate how much it took to ensure everything was just so when you had more to inventory than a pair of daggers and your shadow.

Laura would understand... assuming the scatterbrained Mage stopped staring off into space. She supposed that if the Pandemonium  native wasn't overly worried about their trip to the place, then who was an Empyrian to argue. You could never be too sure with witches, though. Most of them seemed... off, if nothing else.

"It's time we left. Luke won't wait around for us, so we shouldn't wait either. We'll be fine." For some reason, it felt to Zikori that the smile would not have reached Yolin's eyes, had they not been covered. The man had always been difficult to read, but he had also been one of the most sure things about their little team, albeit, a team formed more of necessity than any kind of real desire to work together. Still, a team was a team. And now they were going to step through the gate to Pandemonium. A hellscape torn apart by magic more powerful than had ever been used in Empyrian or the Underworld below. This would be a test that would prove their mettle, or kill them.

As the four stepped up to the gate, there was a shout. Laura fell to her knees, clutching her hat to her head, her four familiars buzzed about her head like maddened beasts. Yolin quickly fell, dragging Zikori’s attention, and Jikar soon after. It took only a moment for the Empyrian to realize what was happening, but it was a moment too late. Some powerful magic had been worked, and those sensitive to it were pained. Someone was trying to disrupt the portal. She had only enough time to turn and grab her supply sack before the four of them were swept away.

Fire engulfed the ground, and they stood in a strange place. Technology of some strange alternate style was strewn about. The Empyrian soldier was familiar with most of the high technology of her home, but this was… alien. Perhaps a divergent invention path. She scanned the barren horizon, it certainly looked like it could be Pandemonium. Perhaps they had been diverted to a different part. She looked down to the others as they recovered, “We’ve arrived.”

Laura looked afraid, her snake familiar glowing as it peeked from under her hat, “This is wrong. We’re not home. We were supposed to see Kate again. She was going to fix all this…”

Yolin stood, hand on his sword, “Well, someone put an awful lot of effort into getting us here, then sealing the way behind. Shall we have a look around?”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Shepard eased her way towards the door. The tracks went inside, and there were voices coming from within. They weren’t hostile to each other, but that meant little. As she neared the door, she began to be able to make out words.

“They might’ve been the ones that messed with the gate. It could be them we’re looking for.” A female voice with a strange accent.

“Nah, the ones that messed with the gate are from Pandemonium. Pluto said he felt it in his whiskers. And I’d know if they were from home.” That one. It was definitely a child. So not likely a hostage, then, if she was advising. About what, wasn’t entirely clear. Probably codenames.

“Regardless of their involvement, we have to determine if they’re a threat before they get here. If we can reason with them, or even if they speak the language.” The way she spoke, that was a military personnel. Likely an officer, given how she seemed to expect to be listened to.

“Well…” The only male voice in the room, this one seemed much more at ease than the others, “We could always ask them. They are right outside.”

Shepard frowned, and edged the door open with her shotgun ready but lowered. Inside was an odd sight. On a chair, sat a small girl in what looked like a costume right out of an old Earth storybook. Pointy hat, broom, and black dress all topped off with a small black cat sitting in her lap. Sitting on a tall piece of equipment, some kind of data bank, it seemed, was a strange woman with dark red skin. Not the skin color often called red, but an almost burgundy hue. A tattered black cloak hung down almost as far as her feet, and one hand spun a dagger lazily as bright, solid red eyes studied the newcomers. Near the door stood a smiling man with spiked white hair and a sword at his side. Stranger still were the red bands that covered his eyes. The way he only looked in their general direction seemed to back up his blindness.

Across the room, the only one not at least trying to look their direction was a blond woman. She had her hands on a table, not having looked up from several charts that lay there. She was very practically dressed, unlike her fellows, and at her sides hung a pair of guns. Several other devices that Shepard couldn’t quite figure out the purpose of, as well as an irresponsible number of old fashioned grenades of various styles. She continued not looking up as she spoke, “Well? I don’t have a terrible lot of patience on a good day, and I’ve spent most of today with Princess Isabella, so that amount is already taxed. Are you friend or are you foe.” She turned, fixing the three of them with a glare, “Be warned, though. I don’t take kindly to liars.”


	2. Semantics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introductions, pick ups, and an Empyrean out of her element. What could go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of realized after last chapter that most people probably don't play DFO, and those that do mostly don't pay attention to the lore. As such, I'm going to do my best to try to insert explanations to what's going on on that side where I can. If I miss anything and you're curious, throw a comment at me. I happen to love DFO lore, and am literally the only DFO lore buff I know.

The woman with the odd gun tilted her head, Zikori did the same. The Empyrean prided herself on her poise, but she did have things that annoyed her more than most. Unknown quantities on the battlefield were among her most disliked things, and was why she had put as much specialization into information gathering as she had. She had never been one for cyphers, but interrogation, observation, and negotiations were among her speciality. This, however, was a situation in which she wasn’t even sure of the name of the world on which she stood.

The woman looked back at her two companions, a machine and an unknown, seemingly insectoid creature. Both certainly matched what could be found on Pandemonium better than anywhere else the group had heard of. The woman spoke, it seemed that proper Empyrean language was respected even here, “You’re in Alliance territory and I’m Commander Shepard of the Alliance Navy, so that means it’s up to you if we’re enemies or not. Now, same question to you.”

Zikori’s frown deepened, of course they would show up in a sovereign state with no prior knowledge of them, “I am Zikori Rinyal, Freyja of the Empyrean and personal guard of Imperial Princess Vega Erje Von Philasia. These are my companions, Jikar, Royal Assassin to the Dark Elf Council.” Her red eyed companion sniffed at the title. “Yolin, student of the Wave Arcanum and Master of the Silent Eye.” The Master himself gave a deep bow, Zikori was almost jealous of his ability to look away from danger without it leaving his sight. “And Laura Freedinston, scholar of Pandemonium and member of the Geniewiz order.” The Pandemonian gave a cheerful wave at the newcomers. “As for our enmity, we are not actually here on purpose. Our transportation was knocked off course somehow. We were on a course from Empyrean to Pandemonium, but we ended up here. Laura thinks that another Pandemonian may have altered the portal in some way. Either way, it sealed behind us and shows no sign that it ever opened, save the scorch mark.”

Laura piped up from her seat, “I’m pretty sure that it was someone on the other side of the portal. There are certain dimensional spells that can alter the way space time interacts with the portals. They use math, so what some spells can do is the equivalent of adding a zero to the end of the number of wherever they happen to be, completely changing the required formula. I think they made a virtual gap in the fabric of Pandemonium and we shot through it and hit the world on the other side. Like if someone pulls a small hole in a knitted sweater. If you pull it right, it’ll snap back in place no worse off for it, but the hole is there long enough for us to fall through.”

Yolin nodded in understanding, while the rest of the party nodded to get the girl to move on, but she was interrupted by the spike headed creature, “Wait, you’re saying someone ripped a hole in a planet?”

Laura giggled, “No no no, not the planet, the space time the planet is on. And not even just the planet, but the universe itself. Or, one of them. Anyone not using spatial magic wouldn’t even notice it, since it’s not actually a hole hole, just a math error.”

Zikori held up a hand, “I appreciate the effort, but I doubt these three studied the Pandimonian texts. Suffice it to say that we’re from an alternate dimension and are lost here until we find a powerful enough practitioner to send us back, or one finds us and pulls us back through. Either way, I think it is in our best interests to not cause any trouble without cause.” The last bit was stressed as she looked back and forth between Jikar and Laura. The dark elf huffed and spun her dagger one last time before it seemed to vanished, though the mage seemed to not notice the comment. The Empyrean looked back to the human across from her, “As a representative of Ghent and the Princess’s Garden, you have my word that we will abide by the laws of your Alliance while we are in your lands.”

 

* * *

 

 

Garus had a bad feeling about these four. It wasn’t that he thought they were trouble themselves, being trouble had never been a reason for Shepard to turn down an ally before, but something wasn’t quite right about the way they moved. His visor was picking up strange biometrics from them, though the one with the dagger was clearly a different species from the others. Still, three of them looked and picked up as human, but their heart rates were either too fast or too slow to be healthy, and the temperature of the kid should have put her into a coma. That was ignoring the fact that his electromagnetic targeting was picking up irregularities throughout the room that it hadn’t found outside.

To put it simply, he could only find evidence that these four were, in fact, not from anywhere in Council Space, and he was wondering how much of their explanation was a pre space flight interpretation of a lucky Mass Effect jump and how much was accurate. Or, maybe they had figured out how to do small scale jumps without a ship before they had made other types of space travel viable. The turian shook his head, that was something for Liara to sort through.

Shepard put away her gun, followed by EDI. Garus hesitated, glancing back at the four of them. A royal guard and an assassin were odd bodyguards for a pair of scholars. Or, at least one of them seemed to be a scholar. He had long ago started doubting her age. After all, her ear shape that he had glimpsed under her hat and her biometrics seemed to suggest she wasn’t human at all. Maybe a smaller sub species? Who knows. Either way, he doubted she would be the navigator if she were just a kid.

“Well, I’d love to stay and chat about blowing holes in space time, but I think we should probably get back to the problem at hand.” The turian cast a meaningful glance at Shepard. He didn’t want to be sidetracked by crazies for longer than necessary, not with Palaven under siege.

Shepard nodded, “Yeah, we can continue our discussion later. We need to get to Sur’Kesh. I can’t exactly leave you on an abandoned world like this, but we don’t have time to drop you off.”

Garus smiled, “Wrex is already annoyed that we’ve had two detours. At least this one was on the way. And it didn’t take as long.”

Shepard mimicked the grin and put a hand to her earpiece, unmuting the com unit, “Cortez, come on around to our location. Area’s secure.”

The group walked outside as the shuttle crested the dusty hill, and Garus couldn’t help but feel like it would be crowded in there again. At least it wouldn’t be quite as bad as the academy.

“Hmm… primitive ship.” The gun toting alien sounded unimpressed.

“Simple.” Laura chirped up, “You can’t feel the power running under there. It’s got Florae all atwitter.”

Garus put a hand to shield his eyes as dust filled the air, “This is just a shuttle, It gets us to the real thing. The Normandy’s something to behold.”

 

* * *

 

 

The four newcomers were sectioned off into a section of the hold by themselves. Presumably to keep them out of the way and from hearing anything too sensitive. At least, that’s what Laura assumed, after Pluto got done with his little look around. It seemed that there were lots of places even a shadow cat couldn’t get to without being noticed. Lots of secrets aboard the ship. She sighed as she looked back to see Zikori pacing. This was never good. At best it would lead to a boring speech.

“So, we didn’t have time to run down the whole of our situation before we met our hosts. So, here it is.” Zikori began, in a probably boring speech, “I’m the only one that was able to get my equipment ready when the shift hit, so our cube supply is thin. We need to be conservative with them, to say the least. Try not to use too much beyond your own unaugmented abilities while we’re here. We are ambassadors of our homes now. Of the dark elves, of the Arad humans, of Empyrean, and of Pandemonium. We should act like it. Based on the talk I’ve heard, our hosts are under siege, and we will all have to pull our weight.”

The Empyrean continued on, but Laura had stopped listening. She felt one of her familiars pinging her for attention. Florae had found her way into the secret room. Being able to traverse power cables seemed to be useful here. Moreso, she had managed to dig up some information from some of the computers. Florae’s scatterbrained nature didn’t lend itself to the work of finding important things, but something had caught her interest. Something in the history banks, specifically, something referencing Terra Cotta. Florae said it was some kind of ancient building, but hearing the ancient name of Pandemonium had already sparked the interest of the Mage. In moments, the girl was replaced by a straw doll, and she was in the upper floors. She would have to stay out of the restricted areas, but maybe she could find some sort of link. Perhaps the math of the portal hadn’t been changed in the way she had originally thought. Below in the hold, a frustrated scream was heard. Apparently the other two had given Zikori the slip as well.

 

* * *

 

Shepard sat in the meeting room across from Wrex. The large Krogan seemed antsy, though it was probably more impatience than anything else, “Relax, big guy, we’ll get her out. Salarians are a lot of things, but right up at the top is logical. They’re not going to doom the galaxy to stop this. And if they do, I think just me and you would be able to plow in and take her back, and we’re taking more than just us.”

Wrex huffed, but the corner of his mouth turned up at the thought of that, “I’m not worried about us getting there to get her out, Shepard, I’m worried that something will happen to the female before we get there. Most of them died in the experiments, and there’s no guarantee that the rest won’t just drop from the stuff those idiots did to them.”

Shepard leaned back, “Nothing we can do about that now, and worrying’s only going to make you grow old faster. And we all know that’s the last thing you need, old man.”

“It’s not your people at risk here, Shepard. You don’t get to say that.”

The commander shrugged her shoulders, “I don’t know, it kind of is. If we don’t get things worked out here, everybody’s Reaper bait, and between Earth and Tuchanka, you’re place isn’t exactly under siege right now. I’m the one that had to leave home being hit with bigger weapons than we’ve ever seen, after all.” Shepard closed her eyes and grinned.

Wrex frowned a bit, but eventually nodded. They were quiet for a while, “What do you think of the people you picked up on the mining planet?”

“I’ve had criminals, assassins, terrorists, a pair of unstable experiments, and you all watching my back at points. Those four seem kind of average for my pick up list.” She opened one eye, “And one of the first things you did was shoot someone I was trying to get information out of. They’ve been downright polite so far.”

The Krogan let out a guffaw, “When you put it that way, I guess you’re just crazy.”

Shepard closed her eye again, “I’ve been called worse. Besides, you’re the one that’s been trusting me this whole time. What’s that make you?”

“Well, the shamen back home have been telling me that for years. I guess you’re just proving it.” 

Shepard waved her hand, “Don’t worry, you’re in good company. Gotta be at least a little out there to do something like fighting Reapers, right?”

The intercom let Joker’s voice come through the speaker, “Commander? We’re here.”

“Welp, time to go confront a grudge that’s been going longer than humans have known there were other people in the galaxy.”

“Finally.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to cut it off here since it seemed to be kind of a weird transition without a chapter break. Next chapter's already halfway written, though, so that's nice. We get to see Major Kirrahe next time, which is always fun. Side note, did you know you can find specs for Garrus' visor? I didn't before just randomly running across them.


End file.
